


Maid of Sea and Stone

by TeamGwenee



Series: A Twist in the Tale [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, mermaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:41:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22137967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamGwenee/pseuds/TeamGwenee
Summary: The fishermen of Lannisport have brought in more than their usual bounty.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: A Twist in the Tale [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604908
Comments: 12
Kudos: 150





	Maid of Sea and Stone

She screamed.

Gods it was such a scream. A rusted dagger squealing deep into glass. Her being heart wrenched from her throat as her thrashing tail was ripped in two. It was no dainty mermaid’s tail from a song, but muscular and heavy, the marble ground shuddering with every thud. Blood splattered and trickled around her as long legs emerged from their scaled cocoon, scarlet and white.

“Bring the tail,” his Lord Father ordered, and men at arms rushed forward. Even crippled upon the floor, the creature thrashed with her thick arms and snapped with pointed teeth. The legs kicked helplessly, sluggish and clumsy.

(When she had been first hauled aboard, she had broken the ankles of two sailors who had moved to confine her with a whack of her tail, and the arms of three more.)

She was held down at spear point as three soldiers bore Lord Tywin his trophy, sapphire scales dry and cracked beneath droplets of blood. Her screams turned to harsh, guttural grunts and groans. No true words but Jaime could hear the pleads and threats as her tail was carried away. Louder and louder when Tywin gave the order for it to be taken to be hung upon an arch, to prove to all who saw it that the Lannisters were Kings of Rock and Sea.

Her grunt turned high and strangled, disappearing in coughs and tears. She froze and lifted a tentative hand to her damp cheeks.

_“She had never known what it was to cry before,”_ Jaime realised. _“She had no concept of tears. Not until the Lannisters got her.”_

~

That evening they feasted. Clams and oysters and prawns and rainbow trout. The Maid, washed clean of salt and blood with perfumed soap, was presented to the court upon a gargantuan silver platter, born upon the backs of servers and placed for all to see upon a small dais in the centre of the Hall. The dais was swathed in stripes of silver and blue silk, and the Maid wore nought but a sheath of gold chains locking together like the net that had stolen her from her home.

She lay surrounded by the sounds of the shells and bones of her kinsfolk be snapped and broken and their flesh devoured by merrymakers. Jaime wondered if the sight of her fellow sea folk being devoured was grotesque to her. But he thought of her teeth and knew she had been the lioness of the sea.

But the sounds themselves, piercing through the air, unmuffled by water, must have grated. The feel of cold metal beneath her, the hard skin of dry hands. Jaime supposed these new, incomprehensible sensations must have overwhelmed her, for she lay upon her platter in a daze.

“Do you think she believes we will eat her?” Tyrion asked his brother, watching the Maid with a scholar’s eye.

“I believe she must,” Jaime replied. Was that not the fear of every captured beast? Surrounded by chewing and crunching, laying prone on a platter. Jaime felt a stirring of sympathy and wondered if there was a way to reassure her of her fate. A life of exhibitionism and degradation awaited, but it was unlikely to end in a stewing pot.

~

Tyrion’s fascination with the Maid was no cause for surprise. Of all the specimens to be studied, she was the rarest. The chance to learn was limitless, especially as she began to slowly work her tongue over the language of man. He watched transfixed as the creature discovered such mundanities as dry hair. Silk and fur, the taste of sugar and the fragrant pong of flowers.

As a fellow grotesque, Tyrion could not help but feel a sense of camaraderie with her, even as she bared her teeth at him and tried to eat his fingers.

~

It was Jaime who found her staggering down the twisting staircase, blood trickling from her feet onto the bare stone steps, jaw clenched and tears trailing down her cheeks. She was muttering beneath her breath, wails and groans. But when he caught her around the waist and attempted to haul her away up the stairs, she grasped his wrist, hissing a rasping “Please.”

“You are wounded,” Jaime replied, gesturing to her bloodied toes. “You will not make it far.”

The Maid seemed only to half understand him. “No,” she agreed. “No good.” She pointed at her toes. “My skin. My tail.”

“Belongs to the Lannisters,” Jaime informed her with a grunt as he tried to heave her body up the steps. “We hauled it up with the rest of the fish.”

She struggled, wrenching and twisting violently in his arms. “The sea! It belongs in the sea. I belong in the sea.”

Jaime sighed. “You miss your home,” he said with forced patience. “Of course you do, but fate has brought you to our shores and you must try to make a home here.”

“No, no, no,” she snapped in frustration. “I belong in the sea. I am not a fish or prawn. I belong in the sea. I must return. I belong in… no. There will be, be-” She grimaced in her struggle to make out the right word. _“A long word.”_

“If we don’t free you, you will give us a talking to?” Jaime asked with a quirk of the eyebrow. “You will have to learn to speak before-”

“Consequences!” she declared in triumph. She had found the word. “There will be consequences.” She grasped his chin, her eyes boring into his as she willed him to understand. Her speech grew twisted and desperate, a tempest raging in her blue eyes. “I belong _to_ the sea.”

Jaime paused.

“To?” he repeated.

The Maid nodded firmly. “To,” she confirmed.

“If you are not returned,” Jaime asked slowly, “What consequences will there be?”

The Maid could not find the words, so she nodded at the trail of blood she had left on the steps.

~

Jaime couldn’t carry the Maid and her tail all the way back the beach, not without being caught by his father’s men. But she couldn’t walk even as the wounds on her tender feet began to heal. Couldn’t fathom how to carry herself far without the sea to keep her afloat. The stairs outside her rooms were the furthest she could go, and that nearly crippled her.

It was Tyrion’s idea to take her to the baths, the large communal baths ideal for swimming in. Jaime would take both of her hands into his own and wade backwards, towing her along in the warm, soft waters. Until at last she could stumble along like a tot, beaming a proud, guileless smile. She didn’t care that the steam caused the light cotton of their shifts to cling to their chests and muscles.

They talked. Jaime told her of the things he would not have a chance to show her, and in her halting tongue she revealed the secrets of her home. Of the caverns and underwater caves, the cracks where the flames of hell cut through. The creatures of the deep, their skins luminous in the pitch.

She told of how she had sat hidden between boats in the docks and behind rocks on the beach, watching the humans in their lives. She had seen the men dance with steel in their hands.

Jaime would have taught her, if they had the time. But the sea roared for what was hers and the gales were beginning to grow.

~

“It was a waste, left pinned to the arch. There was enough for boots and scabbards for both of us and Robert, and slippers for your sister as well as a jewellery case. I have even enough for Tyrion to have what he wills, with skin to spare. Are you not pleased?”

Jaime looked at the blue leather gifts his father had presented to him and pleaded to the Gods to instruct him on what to say to the Maid when he told her what had become of her fish skin.

~

The fishermen began returning empty handed (man had taken too much and would take no more), and then they ceased to return (eaten up in waves to pay the debt.) Merchant ships were devoured with all their treasures. Waves ripped up the cliff faces. Tore down castles and villages. Empty eyes and empty bellies swelled within the streets of Lannisport, in the alleys and slums and manses and castles, and like a plague, hunger swept through the Westerlands. 

The day the Maid made it to the sea, it was not a day for joy. It was always going to sting, but that day would bring the Maid no freedom and it was not her that Jaime bid goodbye to.

Jaime helped steady the Maid as she knelt into the waves she would never return to, the salty spit kissing her cheeks. Wet yellow locks clung to her chin and cheeks and her lips. Jaime combed them back and held her still as she leant into the water and whispered a name.

~

Tywin.

Tywin gave the order.

Tywin desecrated her skin.

Tywin was protector of his people.

Tywin was a Lannister.

Tywin would pay the debt.

(Those who knew Joanna Lannister in life swore they heard her voice that night, a siren’s song carried on the breeze. Tywin Lannister went under with a smile on his blue lips.)

~

The first time the Maid stumbled unaided through the fog and water of the bath, she fell into Jaime’s arms, laughing giddily. It was the laugh of a brook running through the forest, of waves breaking during a scorching summer. And when Jaime’s senses were borne away on the tide and he kissed her, he could taste salt. But there was a sweetness to it as well.

After the Maid had made her offering, Jaime would not know her laughs and kisses for a moon’s turn, until the Maid’s shame and Jaime’s anger and grief began to ebb away.

It was during a lesson he felt their blessing again. He was teaching her to dance with steel.

_“A sword, it is called a sword.”_

( _Sword. Sw-oor-duh._ A good word. One of her favourites of her new words. Second only to one other.)

_“We shall have to find you a name. I do not think I can call you Maid much longer.”_

The kiss still carried a taste of the sea, and the sweetness remained. And would do so for the many to come.


End file.
